


The Twisted Sinews Of Thy Heart

by EssayOfThoughts



Series: MCU Maximoff Oneshots [89]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Abuse, Abusive Relationships, Codependency, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Intervention, Pietro is dead but he is mentioned a lot and has a big impact here, Sexual Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-14
Updated: 2016-07-14
Packaged: 2018-07-24 01:57:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7488870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vision is always there. The others have other things to do, work or training, responsibilities and hobbies, all have things to fill their time. Wanda has no place yet, though, and Vision is entirely new. Vision is always there, when the nightmares come, when she cannot make herself move from her bed, from the corner of the shower, when she wants nothing more than to scream and lash out with her scarlet.</p><p>He is there, certain and unafraid, ready to listen, offer comfort and advice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Twisted Sinews Of Thy Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SecondStarOnTheLeft](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/gifts), [TobermorianSass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TobermorianSass/gifts), [wandasmaximoffs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wandasmaximoffs/gifts).



> Title is sort-of taken from William Blake's _The Tyger_.

After what happens on Novi Grad, _to_ Novi Grad, Vision is a rock for Wanda. For all his days old youth he has a calm certainty, a constancy, and comforts her through the nightmares and night terrors that plague her.

And he isn’t _scared_ of her. Isn’t scared of her scarlet lashing out with each new nightmare and each repeat of the first.

Her scarlet can hold him, they learn, after the first nightmare. Wanda wakes to find she has pinned Vision to the wall with her scarlet. He is unharmed and assures Wanda that he is “quite all right.”

Wanda doesn't know if she can believe him - if she even _should_ \- but she tries. It is a nice idea, that there is someone here she can’t hurt, someone who, like Pietro, is unafraid of her scarlet.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes it all bubbles up in Wanda. The grief for Pietro, the guilt for Novi Grad, the confusion at being on the side of lifelong enemies. It bubbles up and tries to lash out. It floods her mind with scarlet and Wanda feels as she did when her powers had first burst through her veins, as though she has no control to speak of, and she _needs_ that, needs control like a lifeline. The world around her is uncontrolled, is more than she can handle and scarlet lashes outwards, just as uncontrolled, but _seeking_ control, and thus it is that Wanda has Vision pinned to the wall all over again.

 

* * *

 

“I am quite all right,” he says when she lets him down. “Are you?”

Wanda shakes her head and sobs, and buries her face in the crook of Vision’s shoulder. His arms are tentative as they wrap around her, and are a cold comfort made with metal as they are, but his presence, his lack of judgement, his willingness to wait mean so very much to her.

 

* * *

 

Some days Wanda gulps down heady alcohol, letting the burn fill her stomach. Something about it - the burn, the shiver the alcohol gives - is almost like arousal, almost like sex, is something to let herself get lost in.

Sometimes, instead of clinging rigidly to order, Wanda wants to unwind, unspool like thread into nothing, nothing at all, until she is a skein of scarlet in the galaxy, unknotting into nothingness.

Sometimes she goes to Vision, kisses him with a surety not her own, kisses and kisses until he stops asking if she is sure and kisses back.

 _Of course I am sure_ , she thinks, thoughts swimming through the amber lake of alcohol. _I would not do this if I was not_.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes, fleetingly, she wonders, _is this sensible?_ She doesn’t know anymore, really. With Pietro’s anchoring force gone she floats, drifts, dodges through the world without trying to make contact. Sometimes she doesn’t _want_ to make contact, wants to hold herself apart, wants to not have to worry about the others, not have to _feel_ at all.

Sometimes Vision’s passivity in the face of her anger reminds her of Pietro, patient and kind, waiting out her fury, taking it into himself, offering advice and support, doing what he could in his own way. Pietro’s calm was of purpose though, his patience only given to her, his choice to wait out her fury, to take it into himself, to offer support exactly that, a choice he had always held to. Pietro’s calm for her was a part of who he was. Vision’s calm… Vision’s calm is for everyone, shared out freely, a part of him he offers to everyone he comes across.

There are similarities, Wanda knows, and differences. For all Vision’s patience in the face of her anger, her grief, her sorrow, he is not her brother.

Sometimes, sometimes Wanda hates that.

(Pietro chose it and she was always there for his fury in turn. Vision has no fury, but he is a bottomless well into which she may pour her own.)

 

* * *

 

“Don’t you mind?” It’s Clint’s voice, Clint’s silhouette at the door. Wanda is curled on her bed, feigning sleep. She hears Vision’s answer, sees him cock his head to one side.

“Mind what?”

Clint’s pause is long, is quiet, is almost sad from what Wanda can see of his purple mind. Wanda sees his silhouette lift an arm, hears the sound of a hand being scrubbed over his face.

“Nevermind,” he says. “But if it gets worse - you’ll tell us, right? You don’t have to deal with this alone.”

Vision still sounds half-puzzled as he says, “Of course.”

Wanda hears the door close, hears the soft sound of Vision’s feet on the floor as he pads over, sits at the edge of her bed. His hand is cold and gentle on her arm. “You don’t need to worry,” he says, his voice almost a promise. “Sleep on.”

His lips are cool and gentle on her shoulder.

 

* * *

 

Vision is always there. The others have other things to do, work or training, responsibilities and hobbies, all have things to fill their time. Wanda has no place yet, though, and Vision is entirely new. Vision is always there, when the nightmares come, when she cannot make herself move from her bed, from the corner of the shower, when she wants nothing more than to scream and lash out with her scarlet.

He is there, certain and unafraid, ready to listen, offer comfort and advice.

(He has learned, now, that when Wanda kisses him there is no reason to ask if she is certain: even if she is not she will not reply. All she wants is to be lost in sensation, to not have to think and dwell on grief and loss.)

 

* * *

 

Sometimes Wanda’s screams are not at anyone. Sometimes her screams are at the world. It took from her, over and over, took her parents, took her childhood, took her hope and her freedom, took her humanity and her vengeance and last of all it took her brother, the one person it had given to her - whom she had been given to - from the moments of their births.

Wanda clutches her head, digs her fingers into her hair and _screams_ , screams her fury at the world, lets her scarlet lash out as it did in grief and loss and pain, because this is all of that and magnified to more, made of her brother’s death and her realisations and all of the constant. Building. Pain.

Wanda screams and screams and sobs, and metal arms close softly around her even as scarlet tries to scare them back.

 

* * *

 

“You should go,” she says to Vision when she is lucid again. “You should leave me to this.”

Vision’s fingers stroke back her hair, untangle the knots she made. “No,” he says. “I could not do that to you.”

“Then you will die,” Wanda says. “Everyone around me dies. My parents, my city, my brother. Everyone dies.”

“I am vibranium,” Vision says. “I am more than simply human.” He is quiet, pensive, Wanda can see his mind softly turning. “We do not know if I even _can_ die.”

Wanda turns in his embrace, stretches to press a kiss to his lips, fierce and warm and the only anchoring she will accept. _Don’t leave me,_ she thinks. _Don’t let the world take you from me too_ . The kisses they share have always had a note of desperation, but these, now, _are_ desperate, are _demanding._

 _Don’t leave me,_ Wanda thinks. “Do not leave me,” she says. And then, in Sokovian. “Do not let me be alone, do not let me lose more, please, please,” gasped out between kisses and kisses and touches and touches, every moment asking more of Vision than he has given, than he can give.

 _“Please,”_ Wanda says. “Anything but more loss.”

 

* * *

 

“This isn’t healthy.” It’s Clint’s voice again, soft at the door. “What she asks of you, what you let her do to you.”

Wanda can hear the tiny sounds that mean Vision has turned his head to glance to where she is sprawled, feigning sleep, in the bed they now share. “She doesn’t hurt me,” he says. “Regardless of if she can, she does not want to. She no more wants to hurt me than she wanted to lose her brother when she asked him to leave her to fight alone. No more than I want to see anyone hurt.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I’m not human, Clint.” Vision’s voice is… Wanda thinks he almost sounds tired. “I am not human. I do not think how you do. I can handle this. I will handle this, for Wanda’s sake.”

“You shouldn’t have to,” Clint says. “You should let us-”

“Tell her? Hurt her with the realisation?”

Clint sighs, long and low. “Sometimes,” he says. “Sometimes you need reality to come bite you in the ass.”

 

* * *

 

Nightmares.

Nightmares are a myriad times worse now, without Pietro to pull her from them. Fears new and old compound into the warping space of dreams, become truth and lies and all between, and when Wanda wakes from the old nightmare, the first nightmare, that of crushing rubble and air filled with dust, her brother’s dead body pressed to her back… there is no Pietro to help her.

Some days, some days she thinks that is the worst of it, waking from the nightmare, the one that had always been _theirs_ , the one that no one but they understood, and to find that he is not there. It makes every ache worse to know it, to have it reinforced to her, that he is not there in her dreams, is not there when she wakes.

(Sometimes, sometimes she dreams that he _is_ there with her and the realisation when she wakes to find only Vision’s cold metal hands beside her…)

(There are days when Wanda says nothing at all, because any noise that she made would become a scream.)

 

* * *

 

“Hey,” Clint says as Wanda steps into the room. His mind is… tentative, almost wary, and Wanda stands stiffly by the door. “Hey,” he says. “Have a seat.”

Wanda doesn’t take a seat.

She can see the rest of the team in the room, Vision at the far end, expression calm and almost apologetic as he stays there, flanked by Steve and Sam. Natasha stands by Clint, fingertips tapping at her elbows. Rhodey is sat further down the table, looking concerned and _Stark_ … Stark sits by him.

Their minds - near all of them - are tentative, almost suspicious or outright wary. The only exceptions are Vision (his mind darts and makes connections but does not offer up answers he is not certain of) and Stark.

Stark’s mind is quiet, watching, offering up memories almost in warning. Wanda cannot read them, though, can only see Clint talking, not hear his words, and she is very much unsettled.

“Where do we start with this?” Steve asks, more to the team than to her. “This isn’t an easy thing to tackle.”

“Directly,” Sam says. “This isn’t something you deal with sideways.”

In front of her Clint nods, sets his hands almost flat on the table.

“Wanda, we’re worried about your relationship with Vision.”

 

* * *

 

Wanda pauses, thinks. She is still puzzled, still unsettled.

“What do you mean?”

Steve rises, leans forwards. Wanda makes herself meet his gaze. “What he’s saying,” Steve says, his voice terribly gentle. “Is that we think you’re treating Vision abusively.”

 

* * *

 

“I-” she starts. “I would _not,_ why would I…?” Her eyes dart to Vision, her calm reassuring rock. “He is the only thing in all this that has made _sense_.”

“Doesn’t mean you aren’t abusing him,” Sam says. “He deals with all your anger, your attention, you demanding of him constantly--”

Wanda looks to Vision thinking _Please, please, do not let this be true._

“I did not want this confrontation,” Vision says. “I am of the opinion it will only serve to hinder your recovery.”

“It isn’t a recovery when it turns abusive,” Sam says.

“I tried telling Vision that,” Clint says, voice low and gentle. “Didn’t get through.”

“Might get to Wanda though,” Natasha says. “Vision can deal with his own hurts, great, but Wanda needs less dangerous outlets.”

“I am _not_ dangerous.” Wanda holds her scarlet in for all her fear and fury, lets that fragment of control underscore her point. “If Vision wanted otherwise, if he thought me a threat, he is capable of speaking for himself.”

Vision opens his mouth, Wanda remembers his words -- _She no more wants to hurt me than she wanted to lose her brother when she asked him to leave her to fight alone. No more than I want to see anyone hurt_.

Rhodey cuts in. “Vision,” he says, “Is what… a month old? He doesn’t have the life experience for this. If anything you’re taking advantage of that, taking advantage of naivety and kindness and loyalty.”

Wanda’s voice is soft. “You cannot take advantage of what is given freely.”

“Pietro, right?” Clint asks, voice gentle. “Wanda. Witch. _Vision isn’t Pietro_.”

 

* * *

 

 _Vision isn’t Pietro._ Wanda knows this, of course she does, she would not act like this if Pietro wasn’t gone, would not kiss Vision if he were her brother.

All the same to hear it said aloud, wielded like a scalpel, a weapon, peeling back the skin of her thoughts to show the meat of her motivations…

It hurts. It hurts.

 

* * *

 

“Wanda,” Clint says, still gentle. “Vision isn’t your brother. You can’t make him into Pietro 2.0, that’s not how the world works. I know you relied on your brother a lot, we all know how bad it’s been for you with him gone, but _Vision is not Pietro.”_

“Would you treat your brother like this?” Natasha asks. “Demand, scream, expect his presence?”

 _If Pietro were here,_ Wanda thinks, _I would not act like this at all. All would be right in the world._

“Did you treat Pietro like this?” Sam asks. “How you’re treating Vision now, fury and kisses like it makes up for the abuse?”

Wanda’s mind stutters, halts. Clint’s voice is gentle even as it cuts like a knife.

“Did you do this with Pietro too?”

 

* * *

 

For five long seconds Wanda cannot make herself breathe. The breath she manages to drag in hurts, tears down her throat like dust-filled air.

“Pietro was my _brother_ ,” she says. “We would _never-_ ” she drags in another breath and another. “How could you _think_ that?”

“Flowers in the Attic,” Rhodey says, softly, shaking his head. Wanda can see a memory passing through his mind, a page of a book, siblings…

“ _No,”_ Wanda says. “We would _never_ . Pietro… he was my _twin.”_

Clint’s voice is still painfully gentle, calm, precise, cutting, still, like a knife. “That doesn’t mean you can’t have abused him.”

 

* * *

 

People had accused the twins of incest before, of course, their closeness was one often questioned, but _this_ from the _team._ Accusations of abuse and incest, the idea that she would ever hurt _Vision_.

“Stop,” she says, soft as a murmur as the stability she’d started to build for herself begins to crumble. “Stop.”

“If you mistreated Pietro, we need to know,” Natasha says.

“No,” Clint says. “The past is the past, Pietro is _dead._ We can’t change that. What we need to know is if you think this is ok because Pietro let it slide.”

“Stop,” Wanda whispers, so quiet even she can barely hear it.

“People being abused don’t ‘let things slide’, Clint,” Sam says. “They don’t have those kinds of options.”

“Stop,” Wanda whispers again. “Please.”

“Look,” Steve says. “You’re treating Vision in a way that’s worrying all of us. He’s the one dealing with your anger, with your nightmares, with you when you’re drunk and .. uh.”

“Start making out with him,” Natasha says.

“Thank you. You expect his presence, rely on him, almost _cling_ to him. You demand his presence at all hours, when you can’t control your powers your scarlet ends up pinning him to walls or floors so he can’t move… Wanda, that’s all abusive.”

“You can’t keep treating him like this,” Clint says, gentle as a scalpel as he watches her. “Well?”

Wanda runs.

 

* * *

 

“Well _that_ went well,” Stark says.

Steve scrubs a hand over his face. “It was necessary. Wanda needed to-”

“To have a freakout?” Rhodey says, softly. Drums his fingers on the tabletop. “We could have handled that better.”

“She started having the freakout before we’d even made everything clear,” Natasha says. “That _Flowers in the Attic_ comment didn’t help.”

“Hell, none of it helped,” Sam says. “This is…” Dark fingers rub dark brows.

“It was necessary,” Clint says. “Even if-”

“You’ve made it all worse,” Vision says, calm, precise, expression almost angry. “I did tell you what I thought of this idea.”

“You’re not an objective viewpoint in this!”

“I do not think like a human, it doesn’t-”

No one notices as one of them slips from the room.

 

* * *

 

Wanda runs, runs down corridors, away and away and away, until there are walls and minds between her and the glowing minds of the team. _Away, away,_ she thinks. _Away to safety_.

Wanda runs, Wanda hides. Wanda doesn’t want to come out.

Every breath feels like dust-filled air.

 

* * *

 

“Wanda?” It’s Stark’s voice, ringing down the corridor, and Wanda tucks still smaller behind the coats. She hates small spaces, after the bombing, but this… it is a warm small. It is a hiding small, a safe small. She can tuck behind coats here, within soft enclosing warmth and _hides._ Avoids notice, tries to find space and time to _think._

Outside the cupboard the footsteps squeak to a halt. There’s the soft sound of cloth against cloth, and Wanda sees the armoured mind of Tony Stark drop from standing-height to sitting.

“I know you’re in here,” he says. “I’m not gonna ask you to come out. I mean. I have coffee, but I’m pretty sure you’re a tea person.”

Wanda is, but she has no intention of telling Stark that. Not after the meeting. (Every breath still feels like dust-filled air.)

“Look,” Stark says. “About the meeting…” he trails off and Wanda hears the soft sound of someone scratching their scalp. “Yeah that got kinda out of hand, didn’t it?” There’s a sigh, a slurp, a startled “ _ouch_ ”. “Look, kid,” he says, and Wanda wants to snap, because after all she has been through she is _not a child._ After all she has been through should they not trust her to be more than that? “We’re all worried about you. After what you’ve been through… none of us want to see you hurt.”

Wanda cannot help the mocking “ _Ha_!” at that. “How do you say it?” she asks. “That is rich.” She cracks the door open all the same, watching warily out of the gap like a cautious cat.

Stark raises his eyebrows. “I _am_ rich,” he says, and Wanda almost shuts the door again until Stark extends a hand. “Sorry, sorry! Bad joke. Poor taste.”

Wanda’s eyes narrow but she keeps the door open. Memory of the meeting, recent as it is, tucks away behind irritation at Stark.

“None of us meant for it to get out of hand,” he says. “But we _are_ worried about you. You and Vision, how you are? That isn’t healthy. That’s not good for him, it’s not good habits for you, even if you don’t want to believe it, it _is_ abusive, and even if he doesn’t think like a human it’s going to have an effect. Not to mention he is barely a month old, even if he does act like more of an adult than me most of the time.”

“All of the time,” Wanda interjects. Everything else, all else of it, she tucks away. She doesn’t want to think of this with Stark nearby.

“Ok,” Stark says, and Wanda never thought she would see the day that _Stark_ agreed with her. “All of the time. Wanda, I know this from experience. My dad… he wasn’t _abusive_ , but he was neglectful. That probably didn’t help me much. And then well. You know what happened in New York right?”

Wanda nods, recalls the thing that, like their parents deaths, hammered home their hatred of Stark.

“Yeah,” Stark says. “So I fought aliens and carried a nuke through a wormhole to save the city. Very nearly didn’t come _back_ from that.” He pauses, swirls his coffee, takes a sip. “I have PTSD,” he says, and for once there is none of the bravado he usually projects. Just a bizarre bluntness that Wanda doesn’t know how to read. “I have PTSD from the Chitauri invasion, and it started to really affect my relationships with people.”

 _This_ Wanda did not know about Tony Stark.

“Somehow,” he says, “I didn’t get PTSD from being imprisoned for months by nutjobs who wanted me to build a missile for them. I didn’t get it from a guy with electro-whips trying to kill me - though that certainly fucked with my head - no, I got it from _aliens_.” He grins slightly, looks like the arrogant Stark she recognises. “Figures, right? Cosmic horror and all that? Yeah. It gave me a panic attack.”

Wanda edges the door further open. Stark pauses. “Want me to get you tea?”

Wanda considers. She doesn’t _trust_ Stark - and she knows she never will - but he’s not talking about Vision, or about her relationship with Vision, or about Pietro or Sokovia or any of the things she cannot bear to think on right now. Slowly, warily, she nods. Stark sets down his coffee, grins. “Be right back.”

When he comes back it is with a paper cup of tea, a handful of sugar sachets and a tiny plastic container of milk. “Didn’t know how you liked it,” he says, and sits, cross-legged as before, pushing the cup and the sugar and the milk towards Wanda. Wanda shoves the door open, pops the lid off the tea and starts adding sugar.

“Sugar fiend, huh?” Stark sounds very slightly surprised. “I’d not have expected that of you.” Hovering in the air between them are the unsaid words. _I’d have thought that was your brother_. Wanda watches him unblinkingly until he glances away. She fixes her eyes back on her tea.

“Where was I?” Stark asks. “Oh yeah. Panic attack. You know I thought I’d been poisoned when that happened?”

“Would have served you right,” Wanda mutters.

“Probably,” Stark agrees. “I still haven’t tracked down all of the weapons Obie sold, and I still okayed the sale of… even _my_ head hurts trying to figure the math of how much was sold.” There is quiet.

“Look,” Stark says. “I’m not gonna tell you to get therapy. I am many things, but I _try_ not to be a hypocrite.”

“You are.” Wanda looks up from her tea, trusting her scarlet to pop the lid back on while she watches Stark’s expressions.

Stark shrugs. “I said _try_ . Look, I’m not going to insist you get therapy. I didn’t, because I’m a stubborn bastard and I figured I could beat it on my own - I haven’t for the record. When you wiggly-woo’d my head I got a _lovely_ look at the Chitauri all over again. Plus everyone on the team dead.”

Wanda’s gaze drops to the cup of tea in her hands.

“I’m not going to tell you to get therapy,” Stark repeats. “I’ll _recommend_ it, because it’ll almost certainly _help_ , but you’ve got a stubborn streak as wide as mine, so I doubt you’ll listen. Here’s what I am going to tell you to do though: talk to us. When something bothers you, when you don’t know what to do. Talk to someone. Hell, talk to Vision! When I left he was insisting that he’s absolutely fine because he thinks entirely different to a human. I’m sure he’ll listen. Barton will too, if you ask him, and Wilson works in Veteran’s Affairs, so he might know someone who could help if you decide to get therapy.”

“And if I do not want to?”

Stark shrugs. “Then Cap won’t let you out on missions. He’ll probably refuse to let you anywhere alone with Vision, and he’ll probably get the others to agree with him on that.” He shrugs again, sets down his coffee. “I can’t know everything they’d do, I can just guess, and what you’ve been doing…” Wanda does not need to hear what he has to say, what he thinks, she has been thinking out every situation since she hid. “Yeah, it’s unhealthy and not good for either of you. But Wanda?”

She almost flinches for him to use her name, but meets his eyes.

“Talk to us,” he says. “I know you don’t like me-”

Wanda cannot help her snarl at the understatement. “I _hate_ you,” she says. “Your bomb killed my parents, trapped me and Pietro for two days in rubble with no one but the corpses for company.”

“Right,” Stark says. “You hate me. You have good reason to, plenty do! And I know you won’t take most of my advice because you’re at least as stubborn as I am, but just. We’re your team now, all right? It’s not just you and your brother anymore, and it’s not just because he’s gone. If he was alive you’d both be welcome here, and it wouldn’t have to be just _you_ anymore.” He pauses picks up his coffee, takes a sip. “Look, none of the team is … we’re a team of people who aren’t team players. We, all of us, work better alone. We’ve all got used to relying only on ourselves, for everything.”

Wanda supposes that she and Pietro were like that, in a way, but they’d always had each other.

“You know how we managed to work together in time for New York? Someone died. Not even someone meant to be on the team, this Agent, Phil Coulson. And for whatever reason, he’d always believed that we could do this. That humanity was worth fighting for, that Cap could be believed in despite the fact he _wears_ the star spangled banner as a goddamn costume.”

(Wanda cannot help her snorted laugh at that: there is a reason Captain America had been ridiculed more than ripped apart by the people of Sokovia.)

Stark is watching her oddly; it’s the expression the teachers would have when looking at a child they were trying to help, almost fond but careful all the same. “Coulson believed in us. He died before even knowing if we’d manage to pull together. He died trying to stop Loki. Just a man. Just an agent. No special suit, no special powers, no _nothing_ but a great big gun and the guts to pull the trigger when it was pointed at a Norse god who’d just stabbed him through the chest.”

It’s quiet for a while. Stark takes a sip of his coffee, sets it back down. Wanda, cradling her cup of tea in her hands, finally takes a sip. It’s not like what she had in Sokovia, and she thinks she might have added too much sugar but she doesn’t mind. It’s burningly warm and grounding, forcing her to _feel_ instead of hiding away from everything.

“So,” Stark says. “We’re a team of people who aren’t team players, who manage to pull together when necessary to do things the world couldn’t even believe possible.” He pauses, takes a breath, speaks all in a rush. “And every single one of us is fucked up.

“Steve almost got himself killed trying to take down Project Insight. Wilson said something about Bucky Barnes, but he’s dead according to the records so I don’t know _what_ happened there. Steve is still fucked up. Natasha’s made her living by hiding who she is and yet she went and released S.H.I.E.L.D. files to everyone after the Project Insight-HYDRA-within-S.H.I.E.L.D. incident. Barton somehow kept the fact that he has a _family_ hidden away from _everyone on the team_ , barring Natasha. Bruce, hey Bruce turns into a gigantic green rage monster! Thor has issues dealing with his brother and with his mother’s death, and Wilson doesn’t talk about his shit to anyone but his therapist. And then, of course, Rhodey has to deal with _me_. Hopped up on alcohol and caffeine and the issues dear old dad left me with, dealing with a giant company known for making weapons, PTSD from fighting aliens and a complete inability to interact with people without making shit a joke or being purposefully antagonistic.” Stark pauses, lifts his coffee cup at Wanda in a mock-toast. “I think this counts as the latter because, as we’ve established, you hate me.”

Wanda finds herself smiling, the expression creeping its way over her lips, up her cheeks, making the muscles of her face ache.

“We’re all fucked up,” Tony says, and his voice is soft. “We have ways of dealing with things. Well _they_ do. I don’t. I just try to pretend I won’t fuck up again, and self-medicate myself to shit, while refusing therapy each time Pepper and Rhodey suggest it.”

“I will have therapy,” Wanda says, and Stark seems startled. “Then,” she says. “I will at least be better than _you_ in dealing with my problems.”

“Ha!” Tony exclaims. “Stubbornness solving an issue for once.” He smiles at her, and for once it isn’t the arrogant smile he usually wears. “Maybe you will be better at dealing with your issues than me. Maybe that’s what the team needs, more people like Sam and Rhodey and you who all deal with their issues.”

Wanda’s mouth is dry. “Vision,” she says. “He-.”

“Is an android.” Stark’s voice is oddly gentle. “JARVIS, which I put into him, was a natural language UI I made for practice once and then just kept tinkering with for… forever, basically. Ultron was… a bunch of space shit shoved together with my Iron Legion code and some protection protocols that obviously failed. I don’t think any of us have any idea how Vision really thinks, or how this will affect him.”

“ _I_ know,” Wanda says softly.

Stark pauses. “Yeah,” he says. “You would, wouldn’t you?”

For long moments neither of them say anything. Tony lifts his cup of coffee takes a sip, spits it back out. “Damnit,” he says. “It’s gone cold.”

Wanda finds herself chuckling. Stark, great feared Tony Stark, warmonger, weapons-maker, the Iron Man himself, is, in short, an _idiot_. Sitting opposite her Stark is smiling and offers her a hand.

“Come on,” he says. “Let’s go and find the others.”

 

* * *

 

“Where have you _been?”_ Is the first thing they hear, arriving back at the conference room. It’s immediately followed up by: “Stark, what were you _thinking?”_ and proceeds to devolve into Steve telling off Stark and Stark being defensive.

Wanda ignores them all, crosses to Vision, wraps her arms around him. Without question his arms wrap around her.

“I’m sorry,” she says, whispers out. It’s Sokovian, but she knows he can understand her. She can feel the tears tracking their way down her face. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“Shh,” Vision says, and she can feel his fingers gently brushing through her hair. “It’s all right. You never hurt me.”

 _I did_ , Wanda thinks. She tucks her face against his chest and holds him tighter. _I shaped you_ , she sends, spiralling into his mind on a web of scarlet. _You are new to life. I gave you a version of how things should be and you did not know enough to say otherwise._

Vision’s hand strokes through her hair, and she feels his cheek resting against her head. “I know now,” he says, and Wanda can hear the promise in his words, his promise that he will not let it happen again.

“I’m going to get therapy,” she murmurs, as Vision’s hand strokes gently, soothingly over her shoulder. “Will you join me?”

Vision does not need to speak for her to see his mind glowing with calm affirmation.

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are very much appreciated!


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